In 1985, a comic first appeared that proposed one way to judge a film. The Bechdel Test is a simple measure about a movie’s inclusion of female characters. The test asks: 1) Does the movie have at least two women in it? 2) Do they talk to each other? and 3) Does their conversation touch on anything other than a man? Because the Oscars are coming up, this article focuses on creating a similar way to rate how elder-friendly a movie is. Because of the length and breadth of her career, I am calling this the Betty White Movie scale.

The number of so-called multi-generational households — where adults are living with their elderly parents or grown children — has jumped since the Great Recession forced Americans to rethink living on their own.